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Wednesday, September 3, 2014

The Future of Higher Education: Reshaping Universities Through 3D Printing

The Future of Higher Education: Reshaping Universities Through 3D PrintingHow 3D Is Accelerating LearningOne of the most significant aspects of 3D printing for education is that it enables more authentic exploration of objects that may not be readily available to universities. For example, anthropology students at Miami University can handle and study replicas of fragile artifacts, like ancient Egyptian vases, that have been scanned and printed at the university’s 3D printing lab.

Prints Tangible Object From a 3D Design
A 3D printer builds a tangible model or prototype from the electronic file, one layer at a time, through an extrusion-like process using plastics and other flexible materials, or an inkjet-like process to spray a bonding agent onto a very thin layer of fixable powder.

Any Desired Object - Created Layer by Layer
The deposits created by the machine can be applied very accurately to build an object from the bottom up, layer by layer, with resolutions that, even in the least expensive machines, are more than sufficient to express a large amount of detail.

Moving Parts - No Problem
The process even accommodates moving parts within the object. Using different materials and bonding agents, color can be applied, and parts can be rendered in plastic, resin, metal, tissue, and even food. This technology is commonly used in manufacturing to build prototypes of almost any object (scaled to fit the printer, of course) that can be conveyed in three dimensions.

Relevance for Teaching, Learning, or Creative Inquiry
One of the most significant aspects of 3D printing for education is that it enables more authentic exploration of objects that may not be readily available to universities. For example, anthropology students at Miami University can handle and study replicas of fragile artifacts, like ancient Egyptian vases, that have been scanned and printed at the university’s 3D printing lab.

Examine Rare Fossils Without Damaging
Similarly, at the GeoFabLab at Iowa State University, geology students and amateur enthusiasts can examine 3D printed specimens of rare fossils, crystals, and minerals without risk of damaging these precious objects.

Harvard Leverages 3D Printing for Microbatteries
Some of the most compelling progress of 3D printing in higher education comes from institutions that are inventing new objects. A team at Harvard University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently printed lithium-ion microbatteries that are the size of a grain of sand and can supply power to very small devices such as medical implants and miniature cameras.

3D Printing - Medical Research Applications
In the field of medical research, innovation at the microscopic level is seeing increasing growth. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are caging bacteria in 3D-printed enclosures in order to closely approximate actual biological environments for the study of bacterial infections. Scientists at the University of Liverpool are developing 3D-printable synthetic skin that will closely resemble an individual’s age, gender, and ethnicity.

Universities Already Implementing 3D Learning
Examples include North Carolina State University’s Hunt Library Makerspace, the 3DLab at the University of Michigan’s Art, Architecture, and Engineering Library, and the Maker Lab in the Humanities at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. These spaces, equipped with the latest 3D scanners, 3D printers, 3D motion sensors, and laser cutters, not only enable access to tools, but they also encourage collaboration within a community of makers and hackers.Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

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- Engage assessment coordinators and faculty in conversations about academic assessment,
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